LA TEORÍA CELULAR Y LA ORGANIZACIÓN DE LOS SERES VIVOS

There is very little literature on the pedagogy and praxis of youth worker education (Belton & Frost, 2010:xi). Those accounts that do exist are descriptions of training courses from previous eras of youth work, prior to the degree level status required of JNC qualified workers in 2010. Watkins (1972) reported on the one-year Diploma in Youth Work course offered, between 1961 and 1970, by the National Training College for the Training of Youth Leaders; and Kitto (1986) outlined the Certificate in Youth and Community Work distance-

learning course, run by the YMCA National College between 1980 and 1985. Both accounts detail course aims, structure, content and some detail of the teaching and learning strategies employed, in addition to the rationale behind these choices. As such, they are rich and interesting historical documents. Both are written from the perspective of the staff experiences: they do not contain a student perspective.

There is even less literature on how youth work students develop their professional values in the context of qualifying education. There are some hints at what might be involved to be found within the literature on youth work: for example, at the end of her final chapter in The

Art of Youth Work, where she argues that youth work is an exercise in moral philosophy,

Kerry Young (2006:110) adds the following:

The implication for youth worker training and development is that workers need to be provided with the opportunity for their own self-exploration, the examination of their own values, the development of their own critical skills and the enlargement of their own capacity for moral philosophy.

Jeffs and Smith (1990b) devote a chapter to ‘Educating informal educators’ at the end of

Using Informal Education. Although they recognise the need for ‘informal education

experiences’ in the education of workers, they also strongly argue for the use of a range of more formal methods. They offer a list of competency areas that educators may want to consider when designing curricula and the associated teaching and learning strategies, summarised below (ibid:134-143):

• the ability to engage with and learn from cultures in a critically reflective way; • engaging with informal and everyday social situations (rather than only with groups

and settings where the worker is in control);

• developing an understanding of what makes ‘for the good’; • fostering critical thinking;

• developing autonomy and a disposition for ‘the good’, rather than the ‘correct’; • building a practice repertoire of examples, images, understandings and actions; • paying attention to their identity and role;

• enabling dialogue;

• handling the thinking and action of others; and • reflecting on and evaluating processes and outcomes.

Although some areas relate more overtly to supporting values development, eg. developing an understanding of what makes for ‘the good’, there is a close relationship between each

area and values development. Jeffs and Smith give a clear rationale for why these are important areas of learning for students, but not a consideration of the teaching and learning strategies best employed to help foster these capacities.

Banks and Gallagher (2009:209-211) offer four suggestions for social worker education to promote the ‘thick and complex [social] virtue’ that they advocate is required for integrity in professional life. They are equally applicable to youth worker education. Firstly, they advocate for spaces where students can ‘discuss, debate, refine and develop a sense of

ownership of the professional values’ (ibid:210) a process which should involve questioning,

interpreting and exercising critical reflection and reflexivity. Secondly, they suggest workers need to develop an awareness of the professional tradition within which they are working and an ability to locate themselves within it. Thirdly, workers need the opportunity to practice dialogue and debate in order to learn the skills required to talk in credible and plausible ways about themselves and their work, to themselves and to others. Finally, workers need courage to act in times of adversity: the opportunity to network and build solidarity with other workers is key to this courage.

A fuller consideration of teaching and learning strategies is given in the QAA Subject Benchmark Statement for Youth and Community Work (2017), which sets out the standards required of graduate Youth and Community Workers and of qualifying degree courses. The statement: describes youth and community work as a practice of informal education (ibid:3); recognises the diverse and contested nature of the work and youth worker education (ibid:8); acknowledges that youth work is an ethical and ‘value-rich activity […] characterised by its

attention to values, principles, purposes and processes’ (ibid:9); and defines it as an inclusive

and anti-oppressive practice, where ‘participation, inclusion, empowerment, partnership and

learning are shared values and fundamental principles of practice’ (ibid:7).

Having outlined the various educational principles that underpin youth work – such as reflection; democracy and participation; critical collaborative enquiry; and emancipatory practice – the statement asserts the following about programmes of degree-level youth worker education:

• (2.11) programmes are characterised by their democratic ethos, with regard to attention to student voice and participation and to the encouragement of collaborative enquiry and critical engagement with the wider social context of their education. (ibid:10)

congruent with the educational processes and contexts that practitioners are being trained to use in community settings, whilst recognising the formal and assessed nature of a bachelor’s degree. (ibid:10)

• (6.1) they draw on the practices of all aspects of the formal/informal education continuum, providing opportunities for learning through reflection, dialogue, debate and peer learning (ibid:19)

• (6.2) the promotion of reflection and of reflexivity is central to all teaching, learning and assessment in this subject area (ibid:19)

• (6.2) teaching is flexible, adaptable, participative, interactive, intersubjective and collaborative in ways that are consistent with the subject area and congruent with informal and non-formal learning (ibid:19)

The statement offers a strong indicator of the aims, methods and ethos of a degree level, qualifying course. However, the tensions inherent in using methods congruent with informal education in an increasingly outcome-focused and target-driven higher education context, although acknowledged (in section 2.13), are not explored.

One notable contribution to the literature on values development is the work of Susan Cooper (2007/8) of Plymouth Marjon University, researching ‘Teaching values in pre- qualifying Youth and Community Work Education’. It was reading a paper written by Cooper (2007/8), outlining her study and key findings, that prompted me to undertake this PhD investigation. Cooper’s study explored the extent to which the curriculum and approach to teaching on the course at Plymouth Marjon enabled students to ‘engage in enquiry in order to

develop their understanding of professional values’ (ibid:58). She found that students

experienced values exploration and critique as a ‘risky’ enterprise and some students, particularly those early on in their student life, seeking to establish their identity as students, did not feel safe enough to engage in this process in group environments for fear of judgement (ibid:62). A research participant commented (ibid:68), ‘some people …. did express

their values at the very beginning and were judged on them … it can be quite intimidating if you were to do that at the very beginning … people are judged on what they say’. However, this

concern was not uniform across the cohort: some students were more able and willing to engage in values discussions (ibid:62) and thought that the beginning of the course was a ‘prime time’ to examine both students’ own values and the values of youth work (ibid:64). Two points arise from this observation. Firstly, fostering ‘safe enough’ spaces that enable students to engage in values exploration and critique early on in their youth worker education would be a valuable support to students’ professional development. Secondly, these spaces need to allow for a differentiated approach to learning, to permit students to

engage at the levels and pace they feel comfortable, so as to increase the depth of their participation and their confidence (Belton & Frost, 2010).

Cooper’s study also raised questions about the connection between personal and professional values, and how students are ‘encouraged and enabled to explore the dilemmas

created by conflicts between personal and professional values’ (ibid:59). Cooper (ibid:67) drew

on research by Fook, Ryan and Hawkins (2000:158), which showed that in the early stages of social worker professional development, personal and professional values were ‘characterised as oppositional’, with the ‘personal’ seen as being sacrificed to the ‘professional’, with workers ‘hiding’ their personal values (Fook et al, ibid:57). Cooper’s (2007/8:67) study found the opposite in some cases. Participants commented:

Student 1: Could you rather say that … rather they put on the professional values but

that they don’t act on them … they work according to their personal values which are actually detrimental to people they are working with …

Student 2: … so their personal values actually shape the way they perform their

professional values … personally I don’t think your personal values can ever be pushed back … I think they are always there, I think that you behave professionally but your personal values still drive that…

I have developed a similar concern based on my own experiences of practice and of teaching students: in pressured situations workers can ‘revert’ to ‘habituated’ values and value-based actions which do not reflect professional value positions, despite being familiar with those professional values. By ‘habituated’ values, I mean those values that students have learned and embedded in their practice and lived experience prior to entering youth worker education. It is only through conscious reflection, ‘seeing’ oneself in action and then ‘re- training’ oneself through practising new ways of working, that new practice habits, arising from considered values, can be formed (Dewey, 1986, 2008; Kolb, 1984). Interestingly, Cooper suggested that wider, societal culture may play a part in how we balance and manage our personal and professional values, drawing on research from Banks and Williams (1999). Youth worker educators need to be aware of the tendencies Cooper highlights – ‘hiding’ and ‘reverting’ – and foster environments which support students in training to understand the inter-relationship between their personal and professional values: not only what they say they would do in theory – their ‘espoused values’ – but what they draw on in practice – their ‘values-in-action’ (Argyris & Schön, 1974).

Two themes emerged from the focus groups Cooper drew on in her research (Cooper, 2007/8:68): firstly, the processes required for values development needed to be dialogical, reflective, and collective – approaches which are consonant with youth work values and practices; and secondly, the importance to students of fostering appropriate learning environments that ‘allow students to feel safe to explore, question and critique something as

sensitive and complex as the value base’.

Cooper made three recommendations for action (ibid:68-70): 1. The curriculum needs to contain ‘spaces for reflection’.

2. Teaching and learning strategies need to foster an environment that supports students to develop a deeper approach to learning.

3. Developing professional wisdom in practice relies not only on subject-specific knowledge, but on an ‘individual and collective sense of ‘being’’ (ibid:69).

These recommendations all have implications for the teaching and learning strategies employed. Interestingly, Cooper (ibid:70) concluded that the ‘space for reflection’ cannot take place within the formal course programme.

Our challenge is to create space and time, outside of the formal assessment relationship, outside of the current modular structure where students choose to participate collectively in the process of values development.

I have a fundamental concern with this conclusion: rather than locating values development as central to youth worker education, it implies that values development can be viewed as peripheral – an optional extra – in which students can choose (or not) to participate. Or that discussion of values is too difficult to manage in formal or uncomfortable spaces. Values- literacy – the ability to engage in the discussion, exploration, critique and evaluation of value positions; to interrogate ones professional self and ones practice in the light of these discussions; to consider how value positions impact (ones) practice; and to use this learning to contribute to the ongoing development of the collective professional framework – is an essential core competence of a professional practitioner. Professional practitioners need to have developed the capacity to have such values discussions in work contexts that can be pressured and uncomfortable places. I contend that if values occupy a central, foundational, position in the practice, as the National Occupational Standards (LSIS 2012:2) assert, and that if youth worker education should be ‘characterised by its attention to values, principles,

development of values has to take place at the heart of the formal assessed programme of teaching and learning activities, in order for students to understand the centrality of the place of values development to youth work practice. This requires educators to devise creative ways to manage the competing demands of values development – most effectively fostered through the application of informal educational principles and practices to learning strategies – and the demands of formal, accredited, degree-level, higher education.